Dollhouse

Italian Premiere | In Competition

Japan, 2025, 110’, Japanese

Directed by: Yaguchi Shinobu
Screenplay: Yaguchi Shinobu
Cast: Nagasawa Masami, Seto Koji

Date of First Release in Territory: June 13th, 2025

If I had gone into the horror/mystery Dollhouse totally cold, seeing the director’s name, Yaguchi Shinobu, in the closing credits would have made doubt my own eyes – and wonder if the film’s many skin-crawling scares and mind-bending twists had discombobulated my brain.

For more three decades now Yaguchi has been Japan’s leading purveyor of smartly crafted comedies, often with a feel-good zero-to-hero arc. Among them is the 2001 Waterboys, a hit comedy about a boys’ synchro swim team that inspired countless knock-offs, and the 2017 Survival Family, whose story of a dysfunctional family fending for itself in a near-future apocalypse was both funny and prescient.

The premise of the new film – a creepy doll that wreaks havoc on humans around it – is a genre staple, with a local example being Nakata Hideo’s 2015 Ghost Theater, in which a malevolent doll spreads terror and confusion in a small theater troupe. But Yaguchi’s take on it is disturbingly different, expressing both contemporary parental fears and referencing ancient strains of Japanese culture and religion.

Nagasawa Masami, who also appeared in Yaguchi’s 2014 Wood Job, stars as Yoshie, the mother of the cute five-year-old Mei, on which she and her husband Tadahiko (Seto Koji) dote. But in a moment of inattention – she goes out shopping for snacks while leaving Mei and her friends alone in the house – every parent’s nightmare becomes a reality.

A year later, a traumatized Yoshie buys an old doll because it reminds her of the departed Mei. That night Tadahiko is startled to see the doll sitting at the dinner table and hears Yoshie talking to it as if it were alive.

He plays along, more so after a therapist tells him Yoshie’s “adoption” of the doll may speed her recovery. Then, miracle of miracles, Yoshie becomes pregnant and a baby girl arrives. Flash forward five years: The girl, Mai, takes an interest in the now forgotten doll – and they become best friends. But the doll is now jealous of the attention the couple lavishes on Mai and is out for payback.

As the story segues from the realistic psychodrama of a mother maddened by grief and guilt to out-and-out horror – and the scramble of the couple to find an exit from their personal hell – the film risks losing its bearings and floating up into the silly-sphere.

But Yaguchi keeps it anchored with at least a semblance of real-world logic, while ratcheting up the supernatural scares. No, the doll doesn’t walk and threateningly talk like the title character of the 2022 shocker M3GAN, whose title character had the excuse of being a AI-powered robot. But it does evade Yoshie’s frantic attempts to discard it, like trash that returns itself because it wasn’t properly sorted.

Eventually the couple calls on assistance, beginning with a temple priest who decides the doll is cursed and progressing to a doll expert (Tanaka Tetsushi) who tells them the doll’s origin story – and how to get it out of their lives. By this point, merely tossing it just won’t work.

In a Western context the lengths to which the couple and expert go to calm the doll’s vengeful spirit may seem excessive or absurd. But in Japan, where the ritual disposal of inanimate objects is a long-accepted practice, they make karmic sense.

And though Dollhouse may conclude with a twist or two too many, its ending feels both welcome and right. Whether or not that means the doll is gone for good, I’ll leave you to guess.

GUEST:

YAGUCHI Shinobu, director
ENDO Manabu, producer

Yaguchi Shinobu

Yaguchi Shinobu (b. 1967) studied at Tokyo Zokei University. In 1993 he made his first theatrical feature, the comedy Down the Drain. Yaguchi’s commercial breakthrough was the 2001 Waterboys, a hit comedy based on the true story of a high school boys’ synchronized swimming team. His next major hit was the 2004 Swing Girls, a film about a fledgling high school girls’ swing band. After that Yaguchi continued to make comedies with a zero-to-hero arc, though his latest, Dollhouse, is his first venture into the horror genre.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

1993 – Down the Drain  